The Breakaways

This graphic novel focuses on the members of a remedial middle school soccer team — so, not the A-team, and not the B-team, but rather the kids who can barely even play the sport.

“They’re the worst of the worst, they suck at soccer and most of them hate it. But what it’s mostly about is their friendships and how they evolve and how they affect each other’s lives,” Brill says. “It’s a funny, honest, moving portrait of what the lives of middle schoolers are actually like. It also captures the incredible diversity of experience that many middle schoolers have in a powerful way. Cathy is an educator, so this is drawing directly from her experiences with students.”